Episode CCXCVII: FREEDOM!

Octopus escapes! Everyone cheer!


We caught this Octopus in a shrimp trap here in Alaska. It had crawled in through a 3 inch opening and terrorized our catch of spot prawns, killing and eating several of them, and then, attached itself to the bait jar and unscrewed the lid to open for dessert of prepared shrimp bait pellets! We decided to let this brilliant creature go (option was to eat it! …yum!) as I respected it’s intelligence and genius. We set it on the deck and let it “escape” on it’s own… Cool fun with a sea creature!

Episode CCXCVI: Cowboys & Creationists.

I’m feeling antici…pation

The always awesome Miriam Goldstein interviews the person who is compiling the tentacle erotica anthology. I’m getting excited. The pharynguloid horde will be making some contributions, I hope — I’ve even had a few ideas, and my appendages have made a few tentative, fluttering strokes at the keyboard — but I’m more interested in what others have to say.

I notice that Miriam didn’t mention if she’d be submitting anything…

Actually, isn’t the whole gang at Deep Sea News morally obligated to contribute to the anthology? Even their name is suggestive, if you read it right!

More bad science in the literature

That sad article on gyres as an explanation for everything has had more fallout: not only has it been removed from Science Daily’s site, not only has Case Western retracted the press release, but one of the editors at the journal Life has resigned his position over it. The editorial board of the journal was completely surprised by the wretched content of the paper, which is not encouraging; apparently they exercise so little oversight at the journal that they were unaware of the crap their reviewers were passing through. One board member thinks it is a hoax, and laughed it off. Think about that; your shiny new journal has just published total garbage, and instead of being brought up short and questioning the quality control of the review process, you think it is amusing that what you consider an obvious hoax slipped in? There’s something seriously wrong there.

Add this to the list of failures at Life: the paper immediaely after Andrulis’s is this one, “Is Life Unique?”, by David Abel. Guess what? It’s Intelligent Design creationism crap. Here’s the abstract:

Abstract: Is life physicochemically unique? No. Is life unique? Yes. Life manifests innumerable formalisms that cannot be generated or explained by physicodynamics alone. Life pursues thousands of biofunctional goals, not the least of which is staying alive. Neither physicodynamics, nor evolution, pursue goals. Life is largely directed by linear digital programming and by the Prescriptive Information (PI) instantiated particularly into physicodynamically indeterminate nucleotide sequencing. Epigenomic controls only compound the sophistication of these formalisms. Life employs representationalism through the use of symbol systems. Life manifests autonomy, homeostasis far from equilibrium in the harshest of environments, positive and negative feedback mechanisms, prevention and correction of its own errors, and organization of its components into Sustained Functional Systems (SFS). Chance and necessity—heat agitation and the cause-and-effect determinism of nature’s orderliness—cannot spawn formalisms such as mathematics, language, symbol systems, coding, decoding, logic, organization (not to be confused with mere self-ordering), integration of circuits, computational success, and the pursuit of functionality. All of these characteristics of life are formal, not physical.

It’s drivel. The whole thing is one long windy argument from assertion, as in the penultimate sentence above, which is simply the bald claim that higher order functions of human functions like cognition cannot be derived from chemistry and physics. The paper itself contains no data at all — no experiments, measurements, or observations — but it is full of novel acronyms. Apparently, all you need to do to make it as a big time creationist is to make up new words and phrases and string them together. I checked out some of his other papers — he seems to be some kind of computer science guy, and this is all he does, is write impenetrably glib papers full of pretentious acronyms, posing as an expert on biology while saying nothing credible about biology at all.

But he certainly has an impressive address and affiliation!

Department of ProtoBioCybernetics and ProtoBioSemiotics, Origin of Life Science Foundation, Inc., 113-120 Hedgewood Drive, Greenbelt, MD 20770

Whoa. Sounds major. Unfortunately, I’ve never heard of this foundation, and all I could find out about it is a webpage in which they announce a million dollar prize for “proposing a highly plausible natural-process mechanism for the spontaneous rise of genetic instructions in nature sufficient to give rise to life.” This sounds suspiciously like standard creationist dodging — they’ll never have to award this prize. So I looked at their judging, and at first glance it seems impressive: they have over 200 judges, including Jack Szostak, Peter Atkins, Paul Davies, and Edward O. Wilson. But then, they mention that judging will be in 5 tiers, and only the ones that pass all other reviews will reach the Nobel prize winners and famous scientists…and the first tier is an “in-house review”. I suspect the big names will never be pestered by this prize committee. Actually, I wonder if most of these judges know that their name is on this list. Maybe you should look in case you’ve been drafted.

I started wondering about this “in-house staff” who would be doing the initial judging, and about the Origin of Life Science Foundation itself. It’s awfully hard to track down — its only web presence is the prize page, and its only employee seems to be…David L. Abel. So I looked it up in google maps to see where the foundation’s majestic headquarters might be.

Origins of Life Science Foundation

It’s a house in a residential neighborhood of a Maryland suburb. It made me wonder if maybe the Department of ProtoBioCybernetics was located in the master bathroom, while he Department of ProtoBioSemiotics was in the hall closet, or whether both were consolidated into a sunny corner of the kitchen. At least it seems to be a step above Patriot University, but it’s still some guy’s house that he’s calling a Foundation with multiple implied Departments with fancy titles.

That’s not all! Mr Abel seems to be a linchpin of the Intelligent Design movement, who manages to work his rambling, incoherent publications into all kinds of journals. In fact, the Discovery Institute just bragged about all their peer-reviewed scientific publications, and there, in their list of over 70 works published over the last 25 years or so, which includes papers by such famous scientists as William Lane Craig and John A. Davison, and prestigious journals like Rivisti di Biologia and their own in-house pet journal, BIO-Complexity, and also seems to include books that were not peer-reviewed at all, are twelve papers by Mr Fancy-Titled-Suburban-House. 17% of the Intelligent Design creationism movement’s ‘scientific’ output comes out of that dwelling in Maryland.

I’d love to see the gigantic laboratory he must have in there.

For your edification, I’ve included the official complete list of Intelligent Design creationism’s publications below the fold. It’s an impressively short list of hackery.

And may I suggest that the journal Life has deeper problems than simply accidentally allowing one bad paper to slip into publication? I think it needs a negative impact factor.

(Also on Sb)

[Read more…]

An open letter to the Indiana legislature

The Indiana Senate has approved this bill:

The governing body of a school corporation may offer instruction on various theories of the origin of life. The curriculum for the course must include theories from multiple religions, which may include, but is not limited to, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Scientology.

I’ve heard a few complaints from Hoosiers about this, including teachers. One high school science teacher has asked me to post this open letter on the subject; they’ve asked that I not include their name, which is sad in itself. Not only is the legislature passing stupid laws, but the environment is so oppressive that the science teachers who are expected to implement it cannot speak out against it, for fear of losing their jobs. Indiana, you suck.

At least I don’t have to worry about the politicians of Indiana gunning for my job, so I can post this letter for my correspondent.

Honorable Representatives of the state of Indiana,

I am quite dismayed to learn of the passage of SB 89 which will give Indiana school boards the authority to require the teaching of various origin stories in public schools. There are several reasons I feel this is an inappropriate action for our state to take.

First, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in 1987 in Edwards v. Aguillard that balanced treatment of creationism and evolution violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Then in 2005 the U.S. District Court in Pennsylvania ruled against the inclusion of Intelligent Design in the science curriculum. As Judge Jones wrote, “To be sure, Darwin’s theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions. The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy.” Now it appears that the citizens of Indiana are being poorly served. If this becomes law, our citizens will have to foot the bill for the lawsuits that will certainly ensue.

Second, I appreciate Indiana’s need to educate our citizens about the beliefs and cultures of our planet’s people. Our students would greatly benefit from learning about the multitude of worldviews that exist, in a philosophy or comparative religion class. Such understanding would make our citizens better prepared for international commerce and political discourse. I do not believe that SB 89 was introduced for this reason, however. The implication is that the introduction of various religious beliefs would take place in the science class room. As a biologist and science teacher, I understand the evidence for evolution is as strong as the evidence for any other theory we teach. I also understand that religious belief is based on faith, which by definition requires no evidence. I do not comprehend how exposing my students to ideas based, not on evidence, but faith could constitute good science education. When I read that this bill will allow school boards to require the teaching of “theories from multiple religions”, I interpret this to indicate that a school board may specify which religions may be taught. Two constitutes “multiple”, so if a school board so chose, they could require teachers to teach Christian and Jewish creation ideas only, which are essentially the same. This would not serve to enlighten students on the diversity of ideas, but to reinforce ideas that either they already hold or that they will find in conflict with their beliefs. In either case, it could set students at odds with each other, while not teaching any science at all.

If I am misinterpreting the spirit of this bill, please change the language to indicate that this is not to be applied to science classes, and/or specify which religions’ views must be taught if the local school board chooses to require this. In my opinion, if this is to be done in any way consistent with spirit of the Establishment Clause, all religious views must be taught. In this case, teachers will not be able to cover the state science standards in 180 days and also teach religion.

Third, the misunderstanding of the word theory in the bill is a sad indication of the ignorance of the authors. In science, the word “theory” does not mean an “idea”. A theory is an explanation for how something happens, based on a great deal of research which has been reviewed, published, tested, re-tested, accepted by most scientists in the field, and not yet disproven. No religion has a “theory” of the origins of life that meets the criteria we require to give an idea the full weight of the title “theory” in science. I would be happy to speak with any representative who would like to learn more about what the theory of evolution actually says and what evidence supports it.

Sincerely,

Indiana High School Science Teacher

(Also on Sb)

As a native, I’m pleased to crash a Washington state poll

Good news from the Pacific Northwest: a bill to legalize same-sex marriage has passed in the state senate, it has good prospects in the house, and the governor will sign it if it lands on her desk. Expect the state to join the ranks of those that respect their citizens equally very soon now.

And then there’s a poll; a strange and revealing poll. A large number of state businesses support gay marriage, so King5 media had to ask if that’s all right with you.

More than 100 companies are supporting gay marriage in Washington. What’s your reaction?

will never buy their products again 14%
I won’t buy most products, but some I can’t live without 5%
I am more likely to buy their products 45%
It won’t change my buying habits 36%

It’s a very odd poll. The list of companies includes places like the Seattle Tattoo Expo and Seattle Gay News; I would think a lot of the people favoring gay marriage might see no need to change their buying habits, so that last category isn’t at all indicative of much of anything. The only answer that seems to have any significance is the first one — the people who won’t buy coffee or salmon from businesses that support equality are nasty creatures, but I can see reasonable arguments for all three of the other choices.

“It’s Part of their Culture”

Richard Dawkins recently spoke at the Jaipur Literary Festival, which was marred by outrage against Salman Rushdie. Does this sound familiar?

The organizers of the festival were placed in an impossibly difficult position. Let down as they were by the spineless Rajasthan government, who had eyes only for the Muslim vote in the current elections, they did their best. They were personally threatened by a baying mob of bearded youths who invaded the festival compound promising murder and mayhem if Rushdie was allowed so much as a video link (as Germaine Greer said at the time of the Danish cartoons row, “What these people really love and do best is pandemonium”).

I’ve got nothing against beards, obviously, but it’s become almost comical how identical these mobs all look: it’s not the facial hair, it’s the attitude, the screaming, ranting hatred, the threatening air, the unthinking uniformity of their anger.

The contrast is also bizarre. Behold the New Atheists, calmly pointing out the absurdity of faith, making no threats, stating that there are better ways to make decisions and progress in our understanding than by wallowing in tradition and treating ancient tracts as holy…and they are accused of being shrill, militant, uncivilized rowdies, driving gentle Christians to the fainting couch.

Meanwhile, Muslim mobs riot, and they get a split reaction: Right-inclining reactionaries call for their execution and/or deportation, which is just as wrong-headed as the Lefty apologists who make excuses for them, demanding that we respect their religious traditions and avoid provoking them by calling their gods into question (and by the way, please don’t question ours, either, say the Christians, because that fainting couch is getting crowded).

But you don’t respect their humanity or their rights as citizens by pandering to the lies in which they’ve been steeped. They have every right to argue their case, but demanding that their critics by silenced or executed is not an argument, and we must reject that approach, on all sides.

Dawkins has more to say:

In my speech I compared the Muslim fatwa-mongers to the Papal Nuncio who, in 1580, encouraged Englishmen to murder Queen Elizabeth because she was “the cause of so much injury to the Catholic faith . . .” I went on to say:

Our whole society is soft on religion. The assumption is remarkably widespread that religious sensitivities are somehow especially deserving of consideration – a consideration not accorded to ordinary prejudice. . . I admit to being offended by Father Christmas, ‘Baby Jesus’, and Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer, but if I tried to act on these prejudices I’d quite rightly be held accountable. I’d be challenged to justify myself. But let somebody’s *religion* be offended and it’s another matter entirely. Not only do the affronted themselves kick up an almighty fuss; they are abetted and encouraged by influential figures from other religions and the liberal establishment. Far from being challenged to justify their beliefs like anybody else, the religious are granted sanctuary in a sort of intellectual no go area.

It should be part of our intellectual, Enlightenment culture that every idea — atheist or religious — should be open to argument and criticism, with no exceptions. And if your culture demands obedience to dogma, violent reprisals to criticism, and murder of any opponent of your views, then I’m going to recognize the fundamental conflict between your views and the goals of a civilized, forward-thinking society, and dismiss your culture as an enemy of reason, and oppose you by committing our version of your hateful acts: by promoting the health, welfare, and education of your children, and mocking the stupidity of your beliefs.

Good work, France!

French courts have upheld the Church of Scientology’s conviction, and Xenu and pals are going to have to cough up €600,000.

A French appeals court on Thursday upheld the Church of Scientology’s 2009 fraud conviction on charges it pressured members into paying large sums for questionable remedies.

“Large sums for questionable remedies”…you know that applies to every religion, right? So when will the Catholic church be put in the docket?

Although, admittedly, €600,000 would be pocket change to the Vatican. I think the sum ought to be vastly larger to cover 15 centuries of lies.